Revolution
by thirty2flavors
Summary: It had been – or would be, in a few short hours -- an entire revolution of a parallel Earth around a parallel Sol, and the Doctor wasn’t sure what he was supposed to feel. // Sequel to "Gingerbread", this features Rose Tyler, blue!Ten and alt!Donna.
1. in which there are surprises

**Author's Note: This falls within the same universe as "Gingerbread", which introduces the alt!Donna present in this story.**

**--  
**

It had been a year.

_Well_, technically speaking it had been three hundred and sixty-four days, fifteen hours, forty-one minutes twenty-eight seconds and counting, but the Doctor supposed, for once, that the rough estimate was close enough.

It had been – or would be, in a few short hours -- an entire revolution of a parallel Earth around a parallel Sol, and the Doctor wasn't sure what he was supposed to feel.

He missed the traveling and the day-to-day adrenaline of never knowing exactly what lay outside those beautiful wooden doors. He missed the finer points of his former physiology – the control, the resilience, the disregard for sleep, the respiratory bypass. He missed the familiar lilt of the TARDIS in his mind. Sometimes -- and he was reluctant to admit it -- he even missed the responsibility, the burden of planets saved and planets _to _be saved, the arrogant but accurate belief that the universe _depended _on him. This universe, he knew, did not need him.

But there were the Tylers, his makeshift human family, and Donna, too – a Donna not so different from the one he'd lost, for all the running-about-the-universe she _hadn't _done.

Mostly, though, feeling spectacularly sorry for himself was a challenge – even for him – when Rose was curled beside him, snoring softly and using an entirely unfair proportion of the blankets. He smiled at the top of her head, and Rose drooled quite attractively onto his pillow.

He wondered how long it had been on the other side of the Void, and if the last of the Time Lords was still traveling alone.

--

By the time he woke the next morning and made it to the kitchen, Rose was already awake, her mobile pressed between her shoulder and her ear, her hands occupied with the task of making scrambled eggs.

"Mum," she was saying exasperatedly into the phone, "_Mum_, it doesn't matter, honestly, it – _no_, Mum, I'm telling you – why don't you call --" Suddenly she seemed to notice the Doctor, twisting as best she could to look at him, and apparently lost her train of thought. She widened her eyes to send him a pained look, then turned back to the eggs. "Look, Mum, I've got to go. Just – ask her, yeah? See you soon. Bye."

"Trouble?" the Doctor asked, sliding the mobile out from between her shoulder and her ear.

She straightened and shook her head. "No, she's just… anyway, I told her we'd go 'round after lunch. That all right?"

The Doctor opened his mouth to respond – mostly to point out that the flaw in the logic of asking him that _now _– when the mobile in his hand started to ring.

Rose snatched the phone from him before he could read the name on the screen. "Can you finish this?" she asked, gesturing with her head towards the eggs. She spun on her heel and wandered out of the kitchen to take the call before he could answer.

The Doctor stared after her, surprised, then looked at the eggs sizzling on the stove.

--

The Doctor spent most of the morning, a good deal of lunch and the entirety of the car ride to the Tyler mansion wondering whether or not he should mention the date.

It was possible, he supposed, that Rose was completely unaware it'd been (very nearly) three-hundred sixty-five and quarter days since they'd been unceremoniously dumped in Norway. She was, after all, only human, and when it came to keeping track of the passing of time, humans were notoriously terrible.

It was also possible that she _had _noticed and was waiting patiently – or impatiently – for him to work up the courage to bring it up.

He wasn't quite sure which outcome he was hoping for. For a species with such a basic understanding of time, humans seemed to place a lot of importance on it – anniversaries, birthdays, New Year's, all annual celebrations meant to signify nothing beyond the fact that time had passed in a linear and thoroughly boring manner.

The thought was faintly unnerving. It _was _an anniversary of sorts, but not an _anniversary. _Rose surely didn't think of it as _their _anniversary, did she? Of course not. Technically speaking it had been a year (nearly) that _they'd _been together, just the two hearts between them, but it wasn't as though the years they'd been on the TARDIS didn't exist, and it seemed rather unfair to exclude those years from the timekeeping process. She certainly wasn't expecting some sort of trivial celebration with … with boxed chocolates and flowers and expensive nights out at restaurants.

Was she?

He looked across the car to study her, trying to determine if she seemed as irritated as people in fiction usually were when anniversaries went unmarked. She _had _been rather distracted that morning, and her mobile _had _been ringing so frequently the Doctor had asked her if she'd started a hotline, and she _was _surreptitiously looking at the clock on the car radio.

The Doctor frowned. Surely if Rose was expecting some sort of ritualistic human celebration involving candles and bad poetry she wouldn't be carting them off to her mother's, of all places. Would she? Was this some parallel-world tradition Rose had neglected to mention?

"Have I got something on my face?" Rose asked, sending him a faintly irritated look of confusion, and the Doctor realized he had been staring in a rather unflattering manner.

"Wha… no! No, I was just…" He fumbled for a sufficiently appeasing word. "… Just admiring."

Rose laughed as she turned the car into the long drive that lead to her family's house. "Think you need to work on your lying, Doctor."

The Doctor rolled his eyes upward innocently as the car slowed to a stop and they exited their respective sides. "Wasn't lying!"

"Oh, 'course not." She smirked at him over the hood of the car and made her way towards the front door, grabbing his hand as she passed him.

The Doctor took it as a sign that perhaps she wasn't angry over not-quite-anniversaries that he hadn't actually forgotten and grinned back at her. "Why are we here, exactly?"

Rose shrugged, not quite meeting his eyes as she said, "Tony wanted to see you."

The front door opened for them before the Doctor could inquire further, and as he stepped through the threshold he was instantly greeted by the child in question launching himself forward and attaching himself to the Doctor's leg. The Doctor stared down at him, surprised, and then noticed that Tony was wearing a colourful, conical cardboard hat.

And then he noticed Donna, Jackie, Pete and Jake, grinning at him from the end of the hallway.

"Surprise!" called Tony eagerly, if belatedly.

The Doctor looked from the boy to the group and back again. "What?"

--

There was a beat of silence, and then Donna said, "_Well_, I think we surprised him."

When the confused look hadn't yet left the Doctor's face, Rose took it upon herself to rescue him.

"Happy birthday, Doctor," she said, bumping his shoulder with hers.

His free hand flew to his hair and he looked around, bewildered. "Right! Birthday. Guess it is, yeah."

"Ha!" laughed Donna from the end of the room. She elbowed Jake and leaned in to whisper something that Rose thought might have been "_probably forget to breathe if Rose weren't around to remind him_".

Jake snickered, but the Doctor continued to look utterly befuddled, as though a surprise birthday party was something he had never been privy to in his nine-hundred-and-change years of existence. It occurred to Rose very suddenly that maybe he hadn't, and she gave his hand a squeeze.

"I… well, this is…" He cast a glance around helplessly from one grinning face to the next.

Rose stifled a giggle; Donna didn't.

"… thank you," he finished lamely, still looking entirely unsure as to what the social protocol demanded in this situation.

"We gots cake," Tony announced, releasing his grip on the Doctor's leg. "_And _ice cream." His eyes widened as though he'd forgotten something very important. "And I got you a hat!" With that, Tony tore out of the room.

"How many times – _no running inside!_" Jackie called after him, exasperated, before turning her attention to Rose and the Doctor. "Well, don't just stand there, come in properly, we're not gonna bite."

Rose let go of his hand, and the Doctor stepped forward with a caution she knew was reserved for highly dangerous creatures. There was a pause, and then Jackie stepped forward, crushing the Doctor in a hug that seemed to perplex him as much as the party itself. He sent Rose a _help me! _stare even as Jackie wished him a happy birthday, and Rose only smiled innocently, making her way across the hall to stand with Jake and Donna.

"Thanks for coming," she said.

Jake looked at her, then looked over to where Jackie had yet to relinquish her hold on the Doctor. "You think I'd miss this? Never."

They watched as the Doctor freed himself from Jackie only to be accosted by Tony, who had returned successfully with a megawatt smile on his face and a colourful birthday hat in his hands.

"Told your mum to get chocolate cake. Still in the kitchen, no candles yet," Donna said, watching the Doctor and Tony as though she couldn't determine which one was the child. "Don't know why she wanted _my _opinion, but all right."

Rose smiled, and wished again that her favourite human-Time Lord meta-crisis would be a little more forthcoming. Donna was the only person in the room who knew the guest of honour merely as Dr. John Noble, and every day coincidences became harder to explain. It had been six months, now, and occasionally Rose entertained the idea of telling Donna the entire ordeal herself. In the end she'd always decided it wasn't her place, but the longer the Doctor waited, the less Rose felt like respecting that right.

"Well, you've got good taste," said Rose, turning down the hall and making her way to the kitchen. The cake was laid out on the island, white and square with swirly blue icing that read _Happy Birthday, Doctor! _in a font entirely too formal.

"Looks nice," she said, resisting the childish urge to swipe a finger through the icing and taste it.

"Still think they should've gone for one of the kiddie designs, if you ask me," said Donna. She looked at Rose and then looked down at the cake. "A big green Martian or something. I suggested that to your mum, she told me 'this family gets enough of stupid aliens, we don't need them in cakes'."

Rose snickered. "You should've seen her at Halloween. Tony decided he wanted to go as an alien."

Donna grinned, leaning backwards against the countertop with her arms folded across her chest. It was hard, sometimes, for Rose to remember that this Donna was not the one who had given the Doctor a handful of humanity.

"Rose, I've been meaning to ask," said Donna, her voice suddenly dropping to the low, cautious tone one used to discuss sensitive information. "Sorry if this is up front, but I thought – well, I don't want to ask _him _because it's not really the sort of thing you just _ask_, but I feel like I ought to know, like it's some secret everyone else in the room knows and I don't."

Rose stared on the loop of the blue frosting letters on the Doctor's cake and concentrated on keeping her face impassive. Perhaps Donna Noble was clever enough to work it out on her own.

Well, part of it, anyway; Rose doubted "instantaneous biological meta-crisis" was in any accountant's vocabulary.

"It's just…" Donna went on, visibly struggling to put words to her thoughts. "The Doctor, has he got any family? He's never mentioned anyone, not once, and no one's here, and it's just … did something happen? Is this a taboo I should be avoiding?"

Rose's mouth – which seemed to have opened slightly on its own accord – snapped shut of its own accord. She looked at Donna and she blinked in surprise.

It occurred to Rose right then that over the course of an entire year, it seemed, no one had thought to ask that question.

It also occurred to Rose right then that neither of them had dreamt up an answer.

--


	2. in which there are lies

The Doctor did not know what to do.

Over the years he'd been in thousands upon thousands of situations that had seemed hopeless or futile or out of his control, and while he didn't relish the feeling, he knew precisely what to expect, how to manage the adrenaline and fear and anxiety. In situations like that, he _knew _how to _not _know what to do.

This – _this _was something entirely different.

There was no danger, no adrenaline, no lives or civilizations or planets or universes hanging in the balance. It was a calm, friendly, well-intentioned affair – simple and happy and _human _– and he had no idea how to deal with it.

Birthdays on Gallifrey had gone unmarked, probably because when one was anticipating a few thousand of them, the whole ordeal became rather redundant. Time Lords simply didn't _do _birthdays. They'd have found the idea of birthday _parties –_ let alone _surprise _birthday parties -- with cake and ice cream and balloons simply preposterous, though he did suppose they might approve of the funny hats.

Birthday parties, surprise or otherwise, were yet another item on the list of human rituals the Doctor knew of, even understood, in an academic, removed sort of way. The past year had reminded him time and again, in ways alternatively subtle and blunt, that this encyclopedic knowledge was, for the most part, completely and utterly useless when it came to the daunting task of _fitting in_.

The Doctor was very good at many things. Fitting in had never been one of them.

So he stood, awkwardly, hands in his pockets and a ridiculous hat on his head. They stuck candles in the cake and they sang a version of _Happy Birthday _that felt foreign even still and the Doctor, for all his adaptability, couldn't help but marvel at how strange the situation was. Strange that there were hats and cake and songs to celebrate nothing beyond the fact that something had happened a year ago. Strangest of all was the knowledge that they'd done this, decorating and planning and singing, _for him._

Once the cake had been distributed on plates far more expensive than plates really had any right to be, the Doctor found himself moving across the room to Donna. She'd been peculiarly quiet, aside from the singing, and there was usually only one reason that Donna Noble was quiet.

She looked up from her cake as he approached, the expression on her face uncomfortably familiar. He knew it backwards and forwards, on her face and all of his own, recognized it instantly the way he recognized himself in the mirror.

It was pity – pity and sadness and grief for someone else's loss, hidden behind a fake supporting smile.

He hadn't been on the receiving end of that look from Donna in over a year.

--

Rose stabbed at her cake with her fork, half-listening to the conversation her father was having with Jake and focusing a majority of her attention on the Doctor and Donna. Though she hoped the chance to steal the Doctor away and give him a heads up would show up on its own time, she rather doubted it.

"Something wrong?" she heard the Doctor ask, and from the corner of her eye she saw Donna's red hair bounce as the woman shook her head.

"'Course not," said Donna, evasively forking a piece of cake into her mouth. "So tell me, Johnny, d'you frequently forget your own birthday?"

Rose smiled down at her cake as she scraped the icing off her plate. "Johnny" was the only name besides "Doctor" that the part-Time Lord responded to with any consistency – "John" frequently met blank stares or delayed reactions, and "Dr. Noble" seemed to work solely because it contained the word "doctor". Like most nicknames, it was a moniker the Doctor had fervently objected to, and each objection had only seemed to cement its place in Donna's vernacular.

It was a name Rose had used it once, experimentally; the look that he had given her had told her in no uncertain terms that it was a name reserved for Donna. Rose didn't mind – it felt strange to call him anything but "Doctor", regardless, and the idea that the two of them got on well enough to have exclusive nicknames filled her with a maternal sort of glee.

Though she would deny it if asked, Rose had been worried when they'd run into this world's Donna Noble. Discouraging the friendship had not been an option, so she'd watched, anxious, and prayed that her Doctor was not disappointed. Rose knew too well how it felt to be shunned by a too-familiar face.

So far, he hadn't been – the Donna of this universe was brilliant in her own right, clever and funny and good in a crisis. Still, there were some sizable secrets between them – one of which, Rose supposed, she really ought to try and fix.

"Doctor," she said suddenly, walking over to the pair and sending them both a smile, "Mum put in some new carpet in my old room, want to go see?"

The Doctor stared at her. "Well… not really, no."

Rose was fairly proud that she managed not to roll her eyes. "Yes you do. Come on." She grabbed him by the elbow and tugged him towards the hallway. "'Scuse us, Donna."

The Doctor tagged along, looking perplexed as Rose lead him down the hall. "I'm sure the carpets are lovely, Rose, but—"

Deciding they were far enough from the rest of the party, Rose stopped and spun around, sending him an exasperated stare. "When are you going to learn to take a hint?"

He raised his eyebrows. "When are you going to start giving better hints? You can't expect me to feign interest in a _carpet_, of all things."

"Donna probably just thinks I feel like snogging you senseless," Rose reasoned.

The Doctor's look turned hopeful. "Oh?"

"Mmm. But that's not why we're here." She ignored his crestfallen look and carried on. "We're here because I … maybe sort-of…" She hesitated, rocking back on her heels a little. God, she _was _turning into him. "Well, I sort of told her your whole family died in a house fire when you were twenty-one."

It seemed to take a full second for the Doctor to register what she'd just said. Then his eyes did accurate impressions of dinner plates. "_What?_"

"I'm sorry! It's just – she asked, and I didn't know what to say, we'd never talked about it – why didn't we ever talk about it? – and I thought… well, it was the first thing I came up with."

She attempted to smile without cringing and failed. It had not really been her best moment, when it came to on-the-spot storytelling.

"A _house fire _is the first thing you thought of?" He was still staring at her as though she was insane, which was a bit rich, really, coming from him. He scratched the back of his head with one hand. "Well, that's a bit… traumatic."

Really, she thought, it was about as traumatic than the truth, but she was hardly about to tell him that. She shrugged. "More traumatic it is, less likely someone is to ask about it."

The Doctor regarded her skeptically. "You don't know Donna Noble." He sighed. "A _house fire, _Rose, really?"

"I'm sorry! I didn't have a lot of time to think about it!" she said again, raising her palms in surrender. Rubbing her eyes, she added, grudgingly, "you were in school at the time. And you had a little sister, sixteen." She paused, bit her lip, and concentrated on a chip in her nail polish. "Named Martha."

"Named – _Rose!_" he practically yelped.

"I know! It just… happened!"

"How does that _just happen?_"

"I don't know, I had to pull this tragic back story out of thin air and that's what came out!" She ran her hands through her hair and smiled apologetically. "It doesn't matter anyway, because you can tell her the _truth_."

The Doctor's expression shifted from a mystified brand of annoyed to closed-off in a split second. Rose was nearly impressed.

"I can't tell her the truth," he snapped, with the attitude of someone who has made the same argument a thousand times. "She—"

"Can't handle the truth?" Rose suggested wryly.

The Doctor glared. "The truth is _insane_, Rose. She's going to think I'm insane."

Rose shrugged. "Give her some credit, Doctor, she's seen some pretty insane things these last few months and it hasn't done her head in yet."

"That's – that's not even comparable," he insisted. "On the insanity scale that's a four. This is a twelve, maybe thirteen. Out of ten."

She snorted, which did nothing to dull his glare. "Come _on, _Doctor, it can't be that bad. Right now, she thinks you're an alien-obsessed, half-mad scientist with way too much pride in his doctorate who's just a teensy bit socially inept. Honestly, the truth is probably less strange than whatever explanation she's got in her head at the moment."

The Doctor stared at her with an expression that reminded her of blue eyes and stupid apes. "The explanation involving house fires and my sister Martha, you mean?" He let out a long sigh, his irritation transmuting into something that made her stomach coil in concern. "I _can't _tell her, Rose. That's not – I just – that's not how this works. She's friends with _Dr. John Noble_. The _human. _With… with house fires, apparently."

Rose smiled sympathetically, stepping forward to close the gap between them. She knew what he meant, and she knew that being anyone other than the Doctor. "That man doesn't exist," she said softly.

"He does," the Doctor insisted, staring over her head down the hallway. "For all intents and purposes, he _does._"

She bit her lip, tracing one hand around on his stomach, focusing on her fingers atop his shirt. "I know you're worried you'll lose her if you tell her the truth –"

"That's – that's not what I'm worried about."

"—and maybe you will." She drew a figure-eight with her index finger. "But you might not." She shrugged, lifting her gaze to his face. "Thing is, you _will _lose her if you keep hiding behind lies. She can't be your best friend if she's busy being John Noble's."

The Doctor said nothing; instead he looped his arms around her and pulled her closer, tucking her head under his chin. Rose lifted her head to press her lips to his jaw, then pulled away and took his hand. "Come on, we can worry about this later. Right _now _there's cake to eat."

--

Donna Noble did not know what to do.

She knew what she _should _do, in theory – she should probably pay more attention to the conversation Jackie was attempting to have with her. She should probably contribute something to the conversation herself, and she should probably not have another piece of cake.

Problem was, she couldn't stop thinking about what Rose had said, and as much as she knew she ought to bury it away, she couldn't. Jackie's description of new carpets did absolutely nothing to tear Donna's thoughts away from the one fact she couldn't seem to shake. The Doctor's family was _dead_, lost in one swift blow years and years ago. She couldn't imagine it.

To say he was eccentric would have been the understatement of the century – after all, he insisted on being called _the Doctor_. Occasionally he seemed so thoroughly perplexed by basic cultural customs that Donna had to question if his accent was genuine. He had an absolutely boundless fascination with sciences and aliens and space and things Donna had always associated with _Star Trek._ Put lightly, he was a little mad.

But he was also brilliant and funny and idiotically brave, and in the six months she'd known him Donna had grown fonder of him than she liked to admit. She hated tropes about kindred spirits, but the Doctor seemed to _get _her in a way that no one had before. Beyond that, he had an absolutely ludicrous amount of faith in her, for reasons completely unknown to Donna; he seemed to believe in her in a way no one ever had before, and she often worried that one day he'd realize how utterly misplaced that faith was.

The idea that perhaps his eccentricity – perhaps the way he talked and talked and talked without ever really saying anything at all – stemmed from something so _horrible _unnerved her. It made a sick sort of sense. She'd lost her father to the Cybermen years ago, an event that had shoved her out of the empty-headed rut of temping and telly that she'd found so comfortable. Was that what the Doctor had done, when he'd lost his whole world? Filled it with physics and aliens and ridiculous mathematics?

She couldn't imagine losing so much so young, couldn't imagine losing so much at all. She couldn't imagine coming out the other side of such a tragedy as anything but bitter and cruel and cold, yet the Doctor was none of those things. That amazed her more than any wealth of knowledge possibly could.

And so she did not know what to do. She knew that like most tragic tales of loss and woe it was probably not something that ought to be brought up at a surprise birthday party. She knew that the Doctor had probably never mentioned his family to her because even now it was a wound easily reopened. She knew that in many ways they were the same, and one of those ways was their reluctance to show any vulnerability.

She also knew that until she said something to him, her knowledge of his loss would stand in the corner of the room in the shape of a very large elephant, and Donna was never known for holding her tongue.

So once the Doctor re-entered the room (looking surprisingly un-snogged, she thought), Donna excused herself from Jackie and marched over to nudge him with her elbow.

"Oi, Johnny, can I talk to you?"


End file.
